Ruth Madievsky: “I’m a doctoral student at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy and a research assistant at an HIV clinic specializing in maternal care in Downtown Los Angeles. My philosophy on the intersection of medicine and poetry is this: medicine lets us live; poetry gives us a reason to. In the words of Hervé Guibert, ‘In writing I am always both the scientist and the rat he slits open to do his research.’” (website)